Various designs have been proposed wherein a beverage container is provided with a drinking straw attached thereto and available to be inserted into the container at the time of use. Examples of such straw attachment designs for beverage containers are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,586,625 issued to Garrett in U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,213 issued to Park et al, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,792,798 issued to Chang, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,559,868 issued to Chang and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,445,033 issued to Sweet. These five (5) United States patents are merely representative of a larger number of patents which disclose beverage containers having straw attachment means therein; however, these five (5) U.S. patents appear to be not only good representative prior art with respect to the present invention, but prior art as relevant to be the present invention as any art of which the Applicant is currently aware. Therefore, these five United States patents are incorporated herein by reference.
Generally speaking, the above and other known prior art designs have not been such as to maximize cleanliness of the beverage container for the user thereof, both upon initially opening the container and upon a subsequent reuse thereof by children and adults alike who, for many and various reasons, do not wish to consume the entire beverage at one time. In addition, these prior art designs have not been particularly well suited to minimizing decarbonation rates within the beverage container and occurring between initial and secondary consumption of the beverage.